MANILA, Philippines ? There seems to be no shortage of foreign film festivals to line up for these days. Following Cine Europa is the 2009 Korean Film Festival, also held at Shangri-La Plaza.

If the only Korean movies you?ve seen are the likes of ?My Sassy Girl? and ?My Wife Is A Gangster,? the festival selections will serve as a great introduction to a broader range of movies from the Land of the Morning Calm. The film fest is sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, in conjunction with the Korean-Philippine Cultural Foundation.

Better chance

There are only seven films featured, giving you a better chance to catch them all. The movie you most definitely shouldn?t miss is Park Chan-Wook?s ?Oldboy.? It?s the superstar in the bunch, having won the 2004 Cannes film fest?s Grand Prix.

?Oldboy? is a tense, deeply disturbing and sometimes darkly funny psychodrama starring Choi Min-Suk, who gives a riveting performance. Choi is Oh Dae-Su, a boorish businessman who, after being bailed out by a friend from a police station one night, suddenly disappears.

When we see him again, he?s in a jail cell that looks like a seedy motel room, not knowing why he?s been locked up. His sole contact with the outside world is via a television set, and he barely keeps himself from going insane as the years pass. He?s incarcerated for 15 years, after which he?s set free, and he runs around the city trying to find out the who and the why behind everything.

The film plays like a nightmare, surreal and blood-soaked, where nothing is as it seems. Gang Hye-Jeong, who plays the young woman who takes Oh in, provides a lightness that balances Choi?s forceful performance, but a sense of doom still permeates everything.

Devoted family man

A similar sense of inevitability runs through the more lighthearted ?The Show Must Go On,? a gangster movie that combines comedy, drama and violence and is also another standout in the festival. Ably directed by Han Jae-Rim, it stars the talented Song Kang-Ho as a blundering gangster who also happens to be a devoted family man. There are plenty of laughs, unsettling scenes of violence, and a perfectly realized melancholic ending that ties everything together.

The other films showing in the festival are ?Forbidden Quest,? ?Sa-kwa,? ?Driving With My Wife?s Lover,? ?Beyond the Years? and ?Barking Dogs Never Bite.? Originally scheduled to screen at Shangri-La only until Sept. 29, the festival has been extended to Oct. 6.